Hundreds of Beavers

Released 2022. Director: Mike Cheslik

APPLEJACK MERCHANT JEAN KAYAK finds himself left with nothing after beavers wreaked havoc at his orchard. They chew through wood beams, his barrels toppled and rolled to a fiery explosion. The man tries to catch fish to stay alive in the winter wilderness but he’s really terrible at it. Then he tries to catch rabbits, then raccoons, then wolves, before taking revenge on the beavers and finally marrying his sweetheart. Hundreds of Beavers is packed tight with incident upon incident, gags upon gags and an unending stream of action scenes. Those few lines of synopsis barely convey an avalanche of mishaps and our hero’s narrow escapes. All of them silly and ridiculous but never dumb or cruel – I haven’t seen a funnier movie in years.

Hundreds of Beavers pays homage to the comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Errol Flynn and The Three Stooges. Shot in grainy black-and-white with only sound effects and cut in fast motion to speed up its physical gags, the movie not only replicates the look of silent movies but more crucially it captures the mood and tone of the slapstick genre flawlessly. You might also think you’re watching a live-action Looney Tunes as the movie operates entirely on cartoon logic and physics, like a man launched from a catapult, or being pecked repeatedly by a woodpecker, or falling into a black hole in the snow.

The simple set-up progresses from a process of scavenging and hunting for survival to a series of bartering that leads eventually to an epic battle with, as the title says, hundreds of beavers, and ends with winning the hand of the daughter of a particularly crabby merchant, with whom the applejack has fallen in love at first sight.

All the animals are people in furry costumes, human-sized and walking upright, as if stuffed toys have come to life. The use of mascot costumes is genius. The cutesy expressions of the animals lend a demented hilarity to the slapstick routine. Watch the beavers – when they die their big round eyes are replaced with a couple of Xs. One of the funniest scenes recreate the famous painting of dogs playing poker, just before they get picked off one by one by wolves (which we don’t see at this point).

Because the human is rather dim and the beavers are quite smart, there’s more excitement in the battle between the two. Another comical gambit (among many) is a pair of beavers meant to be Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson (complete with deer-stalker’s hat and a pipe) spying on and later bamboozling the applejack.

This side-splitting and endlessly absurd comedy builds its momentum and turns a schlump into an endearing action figure. By the time the applejack infiltrates the beavers’ preposterously engineered fortress, he’s no longer doing it because they destroyed his livelihood. He’s doing it because it’s the honourable way to win the hand of the fair maiden. His endurance is not a fool’s errand but a hero’s journey when he successfully overcomes all manners of obstacles for love.

The movie looks cheap, no two ways about it. Yet as strange as it may sound, this is precisely its strong suit. Somehow director Cheslik manages to turn the low production value and patchwork technique into a cohesive production that reflects the filmmakers’ zeal and passion in their storytelling. Simplistic graphics such as the wolves’ eyes in the dark (white ovals blinking against a black background), repetition of motifs and the clever multiplication of costumed action (in reality they only managed to get four beaver suits) to create the impression of a massive crowd are all presented with delight and glee.

I know, it all sounds a bit scruffy and cheesy. Yet the sheer joyfulness that radiates from this unashamedly low-brow, bargain-basement production is an example of craft and a mark of respect and full of enthusiasm. Hundreds of Beavers comes from a place of reverence for the genre and the style. Silly, absolutely. Entertaining, you betcha.

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